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 Garden Layout - The Lawns |
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| There are two lawns in my garden, one on the front and one in the back, and they are completely different entities. The north-facing front garden is in the shade of the house for most of the day, although a 1 metre strip adjacent to the public footpath does get the benefit of the sun during high summer. From April to September, this lawn also catches the early morning and late evening rays. | |
| However, the gound here is terrible; 300mm of plasticine-textured soil lying directly over an impermeable layer of boulder clay, and consequently, this lawn is dripping wet, even in summer. I have installed a filter drain that collects the surplus ground water from the Acer circle and drains the area between that circle and the house itself, but it's still soaking wet! It gets aerated to a fork's depth at least twice a year (more often if Slug Boy really gets on my nerves) and the resulting holes filled with a coarse grit sand, but whether this is helping or not is hard to tell. |  The Front Lawn in Summer |
| The grass itself is fairly good, and there are few weeds, although Speedwell is constantly trying to get a foothold, and the really damp spots are prone to daisies and the inevitable moss. It gets mown once a week during the season and fed three times a year with a proprietary Weed'n'Feed, which helps with the moss.
The lawn in the back garden is split into two by the path. Unlike the front lawn which was there when we bought the house, I laid this lawn from scratch, using a Sports turf that is as near to kid proof as is possible with grasses. Originally, the lawn covered what is now the rockery and extended right up to the fences on either side, but as the children have got older, more and more lawn has been dug up to make way for flower beds. |
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 The Back Lawn in Summer |
Nowadays, it's used primarily by The Teenager for sun-bathing, but requires a lot of work and attention to keep it presentable. Weekly mowings, timed to coincide with those rare moments when Mrs Taz hasn't got washing hanging on the line to impede my work, aeration three times a year, feeding every 6 weeks and regular inspection for weeds, although the two most troublesome invaders are not your typical lawn weeds, but are Shamrock and Alchemilla mollis. |
| Again, shade is a big problem, with the oak tree dominating the southern end of the garden. As you can see in the picture above, even in high summer, the shadow of the oak stretches at least half-way up the garden. The area near where the bench is positioned was completely overrun with mosses and so, in the winter of 1999-2000 it was dug up and turned into a new bed for the millennium. | |
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